Lithium Technologies Names Culhane as CFO in Preparation for IPO

By Ari Levy -
Dec 3, 2012

Lithium Technologies Inc., a maker of
social-media marketing software, hired former DemandTec Inc.
executive Mark Culhane as chief financial officer as the company
prepares for an initial public offering.

Culhane, who previously held the CFO position at three
public companies, takes over the role immediately, Lithium Chief
Executive Officer Rob Tarkoff said in an interview. He’s
replacing Carlton Baab, who’s leaving the company after more
than two years on the job.

Lithium develops software used by companies to communicate
with their clients and track social networks for what customers
are saying about their products and services. Its competitors
include Web-based software maker Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) and Jive
Software Inc. (JIVE), which first sold shares to the public a year ago.
Lithium hasn’t decided when it will hold its IPO and may first
raise another round of financing from private investors, Tarkoff
said.

“We’re thinking about how to position the company for
long-term growth and eventually accessing public markets,”
Tarkoff said. “Bringing Mark in now indicates this is something
I want to get the company ready for.”

Culhane, 52, spent more than a decade at DemandTec and
stayed on briefly after International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)purchased the analytics company for about $440 million in
February. Before that he managed finance at Web software
provider IManage Inc. following six years at cancer drug maker
SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. (SCLN) He’s a graduate of the University
of South Dakota and worked for 10 years at
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC after college.

Funding Experience

Tarkoff said the search process for a CFO started in the
third quarter. Lithium was looking for an executive who had
experience with both late-stage private companies and public
companies, he said.

In January Lithium raised $53.4 million in venture funding,
led by New Enterprise Associates and SAP AG (SAP)’s venture arm. The
capital was for investments in sales and marketing, geographic
expansion and hiring engineers. While Tarkoff declined to
comment on the number of employees, he said at the time of the
fundraising that the company planned to double staffing this
year to 400.

Lithium, started in 2001, was run by co-founder Lyle Fong
until August 2011, when Tarkoff succeeded him as CEO. Tarkoff
joined from Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE), where he was a senior vice
president and ran the digital enterprise business.

Lithium’s current headquarters is in Emeryville,
California, and it will be moving to a new space in San
Francisco in the first half of 2013, Tarkoff said.